Manufacturers must provide information about their products to resellers, consumers, and others. Resellers need product information to select, promote and support the products they distribute. Consumers need information about available products to make informed buying choices. Advertisers, product analysts, manufacturer's representatives, shippers, and others also need information about the goods with which they deal.
Under current practices, product information typically originates with manufacturers and is primarily distributed in conventional print media advertising and product packaging. This information is often incomplete, difficult to update, and available only to a limited distribution. While the advent of the World Wide Web has permitted manufacturers to make detailed, up-to-date product information available via the Internet, the information describing a specific product is often difficult to locate, particularly when the URL (uniform resource locator) of the manufacturer's website is not known.
It is a general object of the present invention to transfer a request for information specified by an identifier, such as a product code, to a preferred source of that information, such as an Internet information resource devoted to the product specified by the product code which is created and maintained by the product's manufacturer.
The preferred embodiment of the present invention employs an Internet resource, called a “product code translator” that is preferrably implemented using the existing Internet Domain Name System for storing cross-references between universal product codes identifying specific products and Internet addresses specifying the locations at which information about these products may be obtained. The cross-references specify the universal product codes assigned to the participating manufacturers, such as Global Trade Item Numbers in the EAN-UCC system widely used in retail stores for barcode scanning at checkout counters, and the Internet addresses where information can be obtained about the products designated by those codes.
A preferred embodiment of the present invention takes the form of a system for disseminating information relating to different manufactured products each of which is designated by a unique universal product code value. The system employs different host computers for storing information about the products. Each computer supports an entry point connection to the Internet that is uniquely identified by an Internet protocol address for receiving and responding to Internet messages requesting information relating to one or more of the products. The server administrators register cross-references in the Internet Domain Name System. Each cross-reference specifies an association between an alphanumeric product code domain name and a corresponding Internet protocol address. The alphanumeric product code domain name is a character string whose content may be completely derived from a specific universal product code value using a predetermined transformation process. The cross-referenced corresponding Internet protocol address identifies the particular entry point connection that receives and responds to Internet messages requesting information relating to a product designated by the specific universal product code value.
Thereafter, any user connected to the Internet may retrieve information or invoke services relating to a product designated by a selected universal product code value. The user derives a target product code domain name character string from the selected universal product code value using the predetermined transformation process, and transmits the target product code domain name to the Internet Domain Name System to obtain the corresponding target Internet protocol address specified by one of the registered cross-references. The user then transmits an Internet message requesting information relating to the selected products to the target Internet protocol address.
The request message contains a Universal Resource Identifier (URI) which includes the target product code domain name character string and which identifies the specific resource reqeusted. The host designated by the Internet protocol address interprets the URI to provide the data or service specified by the URI. The identity and invocation mechanism (binding specification) for resources available at a given host may be specifed by resource description files which may be accessed at predetermined location at the host specified by the target domain name. These resource description files may advantageously include Web Service Inspection Language and Web Service Description Language documents which identify and describe product and company related Web services available at each host.
These and other objects, features and advantages of the present invention will be made more apparent through a consideration of the following detailed description of a preferred embodiment of the invention. In the course of this description, frequent reference will be made to the attached drawings.